The U.S. Agriculture Department is expected later this week to issue a final rule designed to recoup costs associated with animal and plant inspections by raising fees for all truck-borne imports by 187%.
The final rule, effective Dec. 28, sets the fee for using truck transponders at $301.67, up from the current $105. The price of a one-time, border crossing fee into the United States from Canada or Mexico would increase by nearly 44%, to $7.55 from $5.25.
The final rule was a followup to a proposal issued by Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in April of last year. APHIS said the most recent fee adjustment was in 2009.
“We have determined that revised user fee categories and revised user fees are necessary to recover the costs of the current level of activity, to account for actual increases in the cost of doing business and to more accurately align fees with the costs associated with each fee service,” APHIS said in the rule, expected to be published in the Federal Register on Oct. 29.
In addition to the APHIS border inspection fee, U.S. Customs and Border Protection also charges a $100 annual truck inspection fee.
Boyd Stephenson, vice president of International Supply Chain Operations for American Trucking Associations, expressed disappointment with the final rule.
“It’s a terrible imposition, completely inappropriate,” Stephenson told Transport Topics. “We think that it’s a very, very, very bad idea.”
While Stephenson agrees that APHIS should be allowed to recoup its border costs, truckers are in effect being double-charged by CBP, whose agents actually conduct most of the border inspections, and APHIS.
“We don’t mind paying the cost for those front-line inspectors,” Stephenson said.
However, ATA does think it’s unfair to contribute to APHIS' overhead, such as headquarters staff salaries, Stephenson said.
APHIS said it followed federal guidance related to fee setting and managerial cost accounting in determining agricultural quarantine and inspection service program costs.
AQI is a federal program that is designed to identify and address threats to U.S. agriculture and facilitate safe agricultural trade, such as the accidental or intentional introduction of animal diseases and plant pests. Direct animal agriculture hazards include, but are not limited to, foot and mouth disease, avian influenza and classical swine fever, APHIS said.
Plant pests include foreign noxious weeds such as hogweed and insects such as long-horned beetles related to the Asian long-horned beetle that has caused millions of dollars in losses in numerous communities in the United States. Fruit flies, such as the Mediterranean fruit fly, if introduced, would cause significant direct damage to U.S. fruit crops and have major impacts on export markets.
Diseases such as powdery mildews on corn and its relatives, wheat blast on wheat and its related grains, and exotic rice diseases could cause major impacts on staple food supplies and create trade barriers, the agency said.
“The fees that pay for the AQI program help protect our country from these threats at a very small cost in relation to the economic harm that would be caused by any new introduction of pests and diseases,” APHIS said.
